Three Weddings and a Murder

by Milan, Courtney

  “Jamie.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and clung to him tightly. “Don’t you ever disappear again.”

  “I won’t, love.” He buried his face in her hair. She smelled like smoke.

  “You’re squeezing me,” she coughed.

  “I want you close.”

  “I waited all night for you.”

  He might have thought she was angry, were she not pressing her face into his neck. “I apologize, darling. I had to go around the bridge in Polesworth and lost nearly twenty miles. It was an incredibly difficult journey.”

  “Polesworth? Where did you go?” His shoulder muffled her voice.

  “To get you a gift.”

  At this, she pulled back and looked up at him. Her eyes were soft, surprised, but the corners of her lips dipped down.

  He ran a finger down her cheek. “Why are you angry with me?”

  “I don’t know,” she huffed.

  Jamie didn’t want to stop touching her. “I’m sorry I was detained, Cat. I meant what I said.”

  “You said you needed an heir.”

  “No.” He pulled her back into his arms so she wouldn’t see his smile. “I mean, I said a lot more than that.”

  “You said you liked my taste in bedclothes.”

  He let out an exasperated laugh. What a saucy wife he had. He loved that about her.

  He dropped his chin and glanced down at her. She kept her face buried in his neck.

  “Look at me.” She must have heard the tenderness in his voice, for when she glanced up, no lines of anger marked her features. “Let me be clear. I love you, Cat. I always have. I want you as my wife. And I never want to be away from you again.”

  CAT STARED UP INTO her husband’s blue eyes.

  He’d said he loved her.

  Or maybe the fire and smoke and shouting had damaged her ears. “Say it again.”

  “I love you, Cat.”

  Her heart leapt, and she began to tremble everywhere.

  “I—” She stopped to catch her breath. Why was she so nervous? She placed her hand on his heart. Willed herself to be brave. She wanted to say this, needed to. “I never stopped loving you, Jamie.”

  She did not know he could look like this, so soft and tender. She kissed him on his chest, where his shirt was open. “I suppose if something is worth doing once, husband, it is worth doing twice.”

  “Yes.” He stroked her hair.

  Cat looked up at him, this man she had loved for as long as she could remember. “We can rebuild.”

  He tilted his head to the side. “The cottages?”

  “Yes, the cottages.” Down the lane, smoke rose from the ruins of her homes. She’d put so much time and work and hope into those cottages. A part of her felt very nearly burnt to the ground with them. But another part of her, a stronger part, refused to give up. She would rebuild. The families could stay in the empty cabins on the western edge of the estate, closer to the fields. Jamie wouldn’t hire more laborers until spring, and by then her families would be settled in the village. In fact, the women and children could help with the restoration.

  One setback, even a large one, was not cause for defeat.

  When she glanced back at her husband, he was still watching, waiting. She took a deep breath. “And our marriage. We can rebuild our marriage.”

  Relief softened his eyes. He lowered his head to kiss her, and she pressed up on her toes to meet him halfway. It was not an elegant embrace. Neither was it polite. But it was real. And raw. And full of love.

  “I would like that,” he murmured against her lips.

  “I am not saying it will be easy. And I am still frightened that you could hurt me again. But you are worth it.”

  Jamie pressed his forehead to hers. “I regret my actions, Cat. I cannot change them. I cannot undo the hurt I caused you. But I promise I will learn from them. I want to be a better man, a better husband.”

  “And I a better wife. We were both at fault. I should have put you first, that horrible night in London. I should have thought of you before my friend.”

  “And I should have stayed and made amends.” This time, when he hugged her, he lifted her off her feet. “I never want to leave you again.”

  “Especially not in a cold bed,” she grumbled.

  He put her down and stepped away. “Wait here.”

  Playfully, she planted her hands on her hips. “You just said you were never going to leave me.”

  He threw her a smile over his shoulder. “I promise you will like it.”

  Jamie disappeared into the crowd and returned wearing his riding coat. It was ridiculously clean where everything else about him was blackened and dusty.

  He stopped before her and, to her surprise, dropped onto one knee.

  “This is what my important business was.” He opened a small box and held it up. The most beautiful sapphire ring she’d ever seen lay nestled inside.

  “Marry me again, Catherine Meredith Carthwick Raybourne. I want to renew my vows to you. I made promises to you that I broke. I promised to love and cherish you, and I fear I did not do very well.”

  Cat blinked through the tears in her eyes. She hugged her arms around her chest as if she could contain the joy bursting through her. Everything within was singing, soaring, spinning with hope. “Well, I promised to obey you. And I admit I didn’t really mean it.”

  He laughed, his teeth a flash of white against his soot-covered skin. “So you will marry me, again? You will be the wife of my heart?”

  “Yes, Jamie.” Yes, yes. Of course yes! “Always.”

  She twisted her hands together as he came to standing, resisting the urge to throw her arms around him. He had more to say and she wanted to hear what it was.

  “I found the sapphire in Kashmir. Let me see how I did.” He took the ring from the box and held it next to her eyes. “Yes. I remembered your eyes exactly.”

  Cat held out her hand, and he slid the ring onto her finger. The band was designed with elaborate scrolls and perfectly matched her previous engagement ring. “Where did you have it made?”

  “The Jewelry Quarter in Birmingham.”

  “It’s perfect, Jamie.”

  “No, it’s not.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “But it doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be true.”

  LEAVES RUSTLED OVERHEAD as Jamie took her hand beneath the old oak tree. They stood before the heart he had carved into its trunk nine years prior.

  “I promise to love you, Catherine, for all my days. To write you notes whenever I must leave, to tell you about my worries as much as my celebrations.” No humor showed on his face, no amusement. Only deep intention. Integrity. And love. “And to trust you, even if I do not understand or agree with your actions. I pledge my heart to you until death shall us part.”

  Cat squeezed his hands. They were shaking in hers. “I pledge to love and honor you, Jamie, as my husband, my lover, and my friend. I promise to hold you foremost in my heart, even when we do not agree. I will share my life with you, my laughter and my tears, and cherish you always. I pledge my heart to you until death shall us part.”

  He lifted her hand and slid the sapphire ring onto her finger. “With this ring, I thee wed. Again.”

  Cat looked up and smiled into his eyes. Her husband tilted his lips into that lopsided half smile that never failed to melt her heart.

  “Now kiss your bride,” she teased.

  Never did he have to be asked twice. He leaned down and claimed her mouth in a searing kiss.

  Wind sang through the trees. The crisp scent of autumn lingered in the sunlight. Winter was coming and the world was alive with joy.

  Cat slipped her hands down around Jamie’s hips.

  “Hmm,” he murmured against her mouth. “I like this.”

  “We’ve work to do, husband.”

  “Work?” He pulled back and studied her face.

  “Yes,” she tilted her head to the side. “Didn’t you say something about needing
an heir?”

  “So I did.” She laughed as he picked her up and laid her down in the grass.

  The future looked very bright indeed.

  Leigh LaValle recently released her Golden Heart® nominated novel, The Runaway Countess, to high acclaim. When she is not writing, mommying, or reading, she is rarely seen cleaning, and more often found hiking or, when she is really lucky, in the white powder of the ski slopes. Leigh is also a devoted yoga practitioner and instructor. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family, and is hard at work on her next novel.

  Follow Leigh LaValle on twitter at @Leigh_LaValle, friend her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/leigh.lavalle, or visit her website at http://www.LeighLaValle.com.

  More about Leigh’s other works, and an excerpt from her latest release, The Runaway Countess, can be found at the back of this book. Click here for a shortcut.

  For OuiOui. With a kiss on the cheek, perhaps a little too close to the ear.

  Thanks to Carey (my Carey), Silvs, and the Dog of the Week™, for emotional support and not complaining about all the paper everywhere. Robin Harders and Martha Trachtenberg, thanks for the editing. And Leigh, Tessa, and Carey (Bill’s Carey)—for everything.

  A small village in Kent, spring, 1845.

  SIMON DAVENANT HAD JUST three days to woo and marry a woman.

  Not just a woman—the woman.

  Right now, the only things standing between him and the object of his affections were an exuberant field of colored tulips, a walkway of white crushed stones, and seven years of pointed silence on his part.

  It had been that long since last he’d set foot in Chester-on-Woolsey—seven long years in which he’d buried himself in his work, trying to forget dark hair and darker eyes, the feel of her skin, the sound of her laugh.

  It hadn’t worked. Everything he’d done had reminded him of this place.

  Simon had walked to Barrett’s Folly—the little property she had inherited from her aunt—from the railway station three miles distant. He’d diverted from his destination only long enough to leave his valise at the inn in town. The man who had assigned him his room was new to the area; he’d not even blinked in recognition when Simon gave his name.

  At that early hour, only the bakery had been open. He’d stopped for a bun, but old Mrs. Brandell hadn’t remembered him, either. There was no reason the little village should recall him. He’d merely spent his childhood holidays here.

  Nevertheless, it seemed unfair that he should have thought so often of Chester-on-Woolsey, while its inhabitants scarcely gave him so much as a backward glance. Still, he reminded himself as he watched the tulips wave before him, he’d come here for one reason, and one reason only. And she was in the house now in front of him.

  The first glints of morning sunlight spangled off windows that needed washing. Barrett’s Folly had never been more than a cottage, but it seemed even tinier than he remembered. It had been just large enough for an aging woman and her scapegrace niece. He’d only been here twice over Easter, but both times he’d been struck by the effect of the tulips: two full acres, blooming in a riot of pinks and golds and reds.

  One didn’t think of tulips as having an aroma—not like roses or gardenias. But massed in the tens of thousands, he could breathe in their scent: subtle and green and new, a smell that made him remember a time when he’d had nothing but hope for the world. It curled around his heart like a fist, that awakening nostalgia.

  But even if he’d had the inclination to indulge in memories that had grown rather more bitter than sweet, he didn’t have the patience. He certainly didn’t have the time.

  Simon adjusted his cravat, which was made of the finest, purest linen, and arranged his cuffs, which were held together at the wrists by gold links set with onyx stones. For richer or poorer, for better or worse, Virginia Barrett—no, damn it, Virginia Croswell—was finally going to be his.

  He grabbed hold of his determination, ignored the faint protestations of his irrelevant conscience, and strode forward.

  It took several minutes for someone to come when he rapped the knocker smartly. When the door finally opened, the person behind it was a maid-of-all-work, her apron layered with coal dust and white flour alike. She took one look at Simon—at Simon’s cuff links and Simon’s cravat—and frowned in puzzlement.

  “Eee,” she said. “You’ll be having the wrong house, then, sir. The Granthams are two miles down, yet.”

  So it was the Granthams who had purchased his parents’ old home. He didn’t care.

  Simon took off his hat and brushed past her into the entry.

  “I am precisely where I intend to be. Go fetch Mrs. Croswell, will you?”

  The maid glanced at him, standing uninvited in the entry. Her gaze marched up the shiny gold-plated buttons on his navy coat, and settled on his unsmiling countenance.

  “Yes, sir,” she finally said, and ducked back through another door.

  She wasn’t a very good maid. And given the time it had taken her to respond, he suspected she was the only one. Curious, that.

  He set his hat on a side table, and then his gloves. The same mirror from seven years ago sat in its fading false-gold frame on the wall; when he checked his reflection, he noticed that the edges had begun to spot with age. In the corners of the entry, dust had settled. Simon shook his head.

  A door opened, and he turned from his inspection. The maid came through first. Behind him, he could hear a woman speaking.

  “...very well,” she was saying. “But I don’t believe—”

  The woman marched through the door, swiping flour-dusted hands over an apron. She saw him and stopped midstride.

  He had envisioned this moment a thousand times. Sometimes, she threw herself at him. Sometimes, she flushed and looked away. He usually imagined her as she stood in his memory—a young, slim maiden, dressed in demure, light-colored muslins. Often, he’d thought of her in less. Far less.

  But in all his imaginings, he had never pictured her as she was now: features made severe by the dark gray of half-mourning. The possibility that she’d be clad in widow’s garb should have occurred to him. Given the reason behind his swift decampment, it seemed idiotic not to have imagined her in somber colors. Maybe, deep down, he had refused to accept that she had married another man.

  The years had changed her. They’d carved little laugh lines into the corners of her mouth. She’d rounded out comfortably, her hips and breasts fuller, her arms pleasantly plump.

  The discontinuity in his expectations jarred him. She’d been in his thoughts so much over the years that it was disconcerting to discover that she’d existed outside them.

  But of course.

  She rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead, leaving a trace of flour above her eyebrow. “Mr. Davenant. Why, how lovely to see you.” She gave him a faint, patronizing smile—the sort one might grant to an old acquaintance, long forgot. It might have worked, without that streak of flour.

  He crossed his arms. “Are you not going to ask why I’m here?”

  She flicked her gaze behind her. “Alice,” she said to the maid, who stood near the wall, “if you’ll finish putting the bread away, I’d be most obliged. Mr. Davenant and I are old friends. We’ll visit in the parlor.”

  “Old friends,” he repeated in disbelief.

  “We grew up alongside one another.” She was speaking to her maid, but her eyes had not left Simon’s. “At one time, we were quite inseparable.”

  “I would not have put it that way,” Simon said, not quite as mildly as he’d intended. “Inseparable means unable to separate. The last seven years suggest something rather different.”

  “Oh.” Alice glanced between them, perhaps catching a hint of a dangerous undercurrent. “Shall I bring some tea, ma’am?”

  Ginny pursed her lips. “Yes,” she finally said. “That will do nicely. And some of the new bread. And butter. And the raspberry preserves.”

  “The, um—” The maid b
lushed, and glanced at Simon.

  “The good raspberry preserves,” Ginny said sweetly. “Not the ones we use when the vicar comes calling.”

  Simon scarcely muffled a smile at that. She had not responded to his accusatory tone. She’d always been stubborn—damned stubborn. That, apparently, hadn’t changed. It was what he’d liked best about her.

  He waited until they were seated around a table, tea steeping beside them in a chipped china pot, before he spoke again. “How long has it been since last we spoke?” he mused.

  She met his eyes levelly. “You know perfectly well, Simon.”

  “True.” He picked up his teacup and swirled the dark liquid around. “It was seven years, two months, and three—” He cut himself off. “No. It was four days, not three. That last time we saw each other, you refused to speak to me altogether.”

  She hadn’t even blinked at the precise nature of his recollection. “Of course I did.” She took a sip of her tea and smiled, as if that final, bitter argument had become nothing but a fond memory to her. “Can you blame me?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  In the corner, a clock ticked. He counted off the beats, watching her. Waiting for her to break the silence.

  But if the tapping of his fingers unnerved her, she did not show it. Ginny rarely let her emotions show. She simply set down her teacup and turned her saucer precisely. “Sometime in the last seven years, you might have apologized.”

  “Unfortunately, no. I could not have done.” He lifted his head. “What I said to you then... It was rude and unpardonable. And yet there has not been a moment between now and then when I could have truthfully taken it back. You see, I meant every word. I still mean it.”

  She blinked at him. The long column of her throat contracted in a swallow. It was the first unguarded reaction he’d drawn from her. “Oh,” she said quietly. “That’s interesting.”

  “Indeed.” He was watching her very closely. But other than that initial reaction, she betrayed no other response. Not even a twitch of her lips.